Wide Sargasso Sea: Postcolonial literature, Parallel novel, Jean Rhys, Charlotte BrontÃ«, Jane Eyre, Patriarchal, Jamaica, Assimilation, Mental illness: Amazon.es: Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome, John McBrewster: Libros en idiomas extranjeros Libros en idiomas extranjeros AÃ±adir a la Lista de deseos Â¿Tienes uno para vender? Volver atrÃ¡s Ir adelante Escuchar Reproduciendo... Interrumpido EstÃ¡s escuchando una muestra de la ediciÃ³n de audio Audible.

MÃ¡s informaciÃ³n Ver esta imagen Wide Sargasso Sea: Postcolonial literature, Parallel novel, Jean Rhys, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Patriarchal, Jamaica, Assimilation, Mental illness (InglÃ©s) Tapa blanda – 8 ene 2011 Tapa blanda, 8 ene 2011 "Vuelva a intentarlo" DescripciÃ³n del producto Reseña del editor Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 postcolonial parallel novel by Dominica-born author Jean Rhys. Since her previous work, Good Morning, Midnight, was published in 1939, Rhys had lived in obscurity. Wide Sargasso Sea put Rhys into the limelight once more, and became her most successful novel. The novel acts as a prequel to Charlotte BrontÃ«''s famous 1847 novel Jane Eyre. It is the story of the first Mrs.

Rochester, Antoinette (Bertha) Mason, a white Creole heiress, from the time of her youth in the Caribbean to her unhappy marriage and relocation to England. Caught in an oppressive patriarchal society in which she belongs neither to the white Europeans nor the black Jamaicans, Rhys'' novel re-imagines BrontÃ«''s devilish madwoman in the attic. As with many postcolonial works, the novel deals largely with the themes of racial inequality and the harshness of displacement and assimilation. No es necesario ningÃºn dispositivo Kindle. DescÃ¡rgate una de las apps de Kindle gratuitas para comenzar a leer libros Kindle en tu smartphone, tablet u ordenador. Apple Wide Sargasso Sea -- Jean Rhys' prequel to the novel Jane Eyre Wide Sargasso Sea -- Jean Rhys' prequel to the novel Jane Eyre Updated on January 29, 2014 Jean Rhys in her youth. | Source First edition of Rhys' book, Wide Sargasso Sea. | Source The haunting and gothic novel 'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Bronte is reviewed and the themes of the novel examined.

Antoinette / Bertha This novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, written by Jean Rhys, is a prequel to Charlotte Bronte's 1847 famous novel, Jane Eyre. I had read Charlotte Bronte's novel many years ago, but just recently got around to reading Jean Rhys' postcolonial parallel novel set in the Caribbean on the island of Jamaica. Wide Sargasso Sea is the story of Antoinette Cosway, (Bertha Mason Rochester in Jane Eyre) a white Creole heiress, from her youth in the Caribbiean to her unhappy marriage with Mr. Rochester her descent into madness and her relocation to England. As a Creole, Antoinette is caught in an oppressive patriarchal society as she belongs neither to white Europeans nor Black Jamaicans and feels the rootlessness and alienation that Rhys felt and struggled with during her own lifetime. This is one of the most heartbreaking and heartwrenching stories I have ever read.

The novel gives voice to the 'madwoman in the attic', one of the Gothic motifs Bronte used in her novel, as we see 'Bertha', Antoinette, convey the story of her life from childhood to her arranged marriage to an unnamed Englishman. It is Mr. Rochester of Jane Eyre although he is never named outright in Rhys' novel. Rhys brings Antoinette Cosway alive and gives birth to a vibrant, beautiful, interesting, yet fragile woman. Rhys uses multiple voices to tell her story (Antoinette's, Rochester's, and Grace Poole's ) and deeply intertwines her novel's plot with that of Jane Eyre. Bertha as Antoinette is no longer a Gothic motif of the half-caste madwoman in the attic but a real woman with hopes, dreams, fears and desires but vulnerable and actually much like Jane Eyre in some ways. The novel is divided into three parts: Part I takes place in Coulibiri, Jamaica and is completely narrated by Antoinette. It describes her childhood experiences, her mother's mental instability, her pushing Antoinette aside, and her mentally disabled brother's tragic death.

Part II alternates between the viewpoints and narrators of her husband (Rochester) and of Antoinette following their marriage and is set in Granbois, Dominica, an island in the east windward island chain. We see the arranged marriage for money by Rochester and Antoinette as the pawn in this arrangement. We watch as the catalyst for Antoinette's downfall as the suspicion and distrust with which they both have for one another. And, we see the manipulations of a supposed relative of Antoinette's, Daniel Cosway, and his stories of the family's mental instability. We also see, Christophine, Antoinette's old nurse , who constantly distrusts Rochester and her deep beliefs in magic and voodoo of the black island culture, which also influenceds Antoinette. We watch Rochester's unwavering belief of what Daniel Cosway says about the family and this further brings about the decline of the marriage and of Antoinette. Part III is the shortest part and is written from the viewpoint of Antoinette, now called Bertha by Rochester, as she lives in Thornfield Hall/Manor, as she calls it the "Great House".

We see 'Bertha' struggle with what is her purpose in life and her purpose for being at the "Great House." This part traces her life and relationship with Grace Poole who 'guards' her in the hidden attic area on the third floor. It also traces her further disintegrating relationship with Rochester as he hides her from the world, promising to visit her more often, but then becoming involved with Jane. Finally, 'Bertha' takes her own life in the tragic manor fire as she believes it to be her destiny. Of course, the most difficult part to read is Part II as we watch the marriage between Antoinette and Rochester disintegrate and the hate they end up having for each other. As Antoinette realizes Rochester doesn't love her or care about her, she tries to explain her mother's instablilty to him. Rochester's mind is pretty much closed as he believes the letter from Daniel Cosway that states that insanity runs in the entire family. As the gulf enlarges between Antoinette and Rochester, Antoinette's like for Rochester turns to hate and this instigates her descent into insanity.

Rochester, on the other hand, feels he has been duped and betrayed into marrying Antoinette by her step-brother, Richard, and his own father who arranged the marriage. He believes he has been married to a woman who is beneath him and in whose family insanity runs. Rochester believes it is only a matter of time before Antoinette declines into madness as her mother did and it becomes a self-professing prophecy when she does. Before he has even left the islands, Rochester devises the idea of locking Antoinette away in the attic at Thornfield Hall. Antoinette becomes more confused as Rochester begins calling her 'Bertha' instead of Antoinette. She hates being called 'Bertha' which Rochester cruelly does to further the distance from her and what he perceives as her insanity. By the time Antoinette arrives in England, she is known only by the moniker, 'Bertha.' Rhys brings forth in this novel the idea that a woman can become lost in her own society and thus driven out of her mind. This is the most disturbing part of reading this novel.

Had Rochester not gone into the marriage with such suspicion and distrust, had he not believed the Daniel Cosway letter, had he treated Antoinette with care, respect and sensitivity, her descent into madness could have been prevented. Antoinette is far gone by the time they leave the islands for England, but had Rochester not locked her up and hidden her away from the world, they could have had a modicum of a life together. What is truly sad and tragic is that the character of Antoinette and the character of Jane are very similar. Both are independent, vivacious, imaginative young women with troubled childhoods, educated in religious schools and looked down upon by the upper classes. Both marry Mr. Rochester. Antoinette is more rebellious than Jane and less mentally stable than Jane because of her free wandering childhood without much notice, attention, or guidance from her mother. Jane, on the other hand, had the strict Puritan guidance of Lowood school. Wide Sargasso Sea is usually thought of as a postmodern and postcolonial response to Jane Eyre, because the novel was written and published in the 20th century.

Rhys began writing the novel in the 1940's and spent the next twenty years writing and editing her novel. It was finally published in 1966 and brought her great literary acclaim in the latter part of her life. The wide Sargasso Sea with sargassum weeds. | Source Jean Rhys and her Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys lived from 1890-1979, was originally named Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams, and became a 20th century novelist born and raised in the Caribbean island of Dominica, but educated from the age of sixteen in England. She remained and lived the rest of her life in England. She wrote several novels but is best known for Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). Rhys, therefore, understood life in the islands, their history and the social strata in the islands over the years. Her father was a Welsh medical doctor and her mother, a third generation Domincian Creole of Scot's ancestry. She was able to incorporate this knowledge into her novels which all portrayed the mistreated, rootless woman as this is how she saw herself.

As Rhys was part Creole herself, she makes a postcolonial argument in her novel when she ties Rochester's rejection of Antoinette to her Creole heritage which is also a large factor in Antoinette's descent into madness. Rhys parents sent her to England to attend the Perse School for Girls in Cambridge where she was seen as an outsider and ridiculed for her strange accent. She then went on for two terms at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London in 1909, but was asked to leave because she did not speak "proper English." Her unacceptance at these two schools influenced the characters in her novels, which all had trouble assimilating and being accepted in society. She refused to return to the Caribbean with her parents after her time at school and lived quite a bohemian life in London. She became a chorus girl working in diffferent London shows. She married three times and when she began writing novels and short stories she was under the patronage of the English writer Ford Maddox Ford. She and Ford had an affair, but Ford did not leave his wife for her. It was he who suggested she change her name from Ella Williams to Jean Rhys which she did.

By the 1940's, Rhys disappeared from public view and spent her time writing Wide Sargasso Sea. She remained secluded until 1966 and the publication of the novel. The novel was a critical success at the time of publication and Rhys experienced literary fame from the time of publication until her death. This novel is considerded the best of the novels she wrote. She titled the book, Wide Sargasso Sea, because of what the sea symbolizes in the book. The Sargasso Sea is a large area of ocean that expands from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay to Gibraltar, its northern border and from Haiti to Dakar, its southern border. It lies all about Bermuda and extends more than halfway across the Atlantic Ocean. The entire area of the Sargasso Sea is roughly as large as the U.S. The sea is a creation of the great currents of the North Atlantic and the Gulf Stream that encircle it and bring into it millions of tons of floating sargassum weed from which the sea derives its name. There is no flow of fresh water into the sea to dilute its saltiness as it is separated by coastal waters and from polar ice.

The wide Sargasso Sea is a mid-ocean region bounded by the strong currents that sweep around the ocean basins and which become the 'deserts and the wastelands' of the sea. There are few birds and few surface-feeding fishes and little surface plankton to attract them. Life in these areas of the ocean is confined to the deep water. The sea is full of sargassum weeds, brown algae, belonging to several species. It lives attached to reefs and rocky shorelines of the West Indies and Florida. Poor fish swimmers cling to the weed which acts as a life preserver to keep from sinking to the bottom of the sea.It is a self-perpetuating community of plants that have become adapted to life in the open sea needing no roots for attachments. And, herein, lies the symbolism of the Sargasso Sea in Rhys novel. Antoinette has had a life growing up in the Wide Sargasso Sea, but it is a desert, a wasteland of a life. She has metaphorically been tossed and turned, as the sargassum weeds, in the Wide Sargasso Sea, rootless, tossed and turned until she finally descends into madness.

Being a woman in a patriarchial society, Antoinette has no control over her life, is forced into an arranged marriage, and she is like the sargassum weeds that just roll along with the sea. Antoinette is as "the gloomy hulks of vessels doomed to endless drifting in the clinging weed are only the ghosts of things that never were." The character of Edward Rochester When I have read Jane Eyre, and I have read the novel several times, I always sympathised and felt sorry for Edward Rochester. I understood his motivation in wanting to marry Jane even though his mad wife was still alive in the attic in Thornfield Manor. I cheered the end, with Bertha's death, and Rochester's rebirth when Jane returns and they marry. After reading Wide Sargasso Sea, my sympathies have changed. I now sympathise with Antoinette and feel sorry for a lovely, vibrant woman that was indeed made mad by those around her and her life experiences. I find Edward Rochester cruel and hard, and semi-responsible for her descent into madness. That he knew before he left the islands that he would lock Antoinette away in the manor attic with Grace Poole is horrible to me.

I will never be able to read Jane Eyre again with the same open-mindedness toward his character. As Jean Rhys has said about her novel, there are always two sides to a matter. The currents that create the wide Sargasso Sea. | Source Wide Sargasso Sea - The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia Wide Sargasso Sea Train wreck at Montparnasse ( October 22 , 1895 ) by Studio Lévy and Sons. Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 postcolonial parallel novel by Dominica -born author Jean Rhys . After many years of living in obscurity since her last work, Good Morning, Midnight, was published in 1939, Wide Sargasso Sea put Rhys into the limelight once more and became her most successful novel. The novel acts as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë 's famous 1847 novel Jane Eyre . It is the story of the first Mrs. Rochester, Antoinette (Bertha) Mason, a white Creole heiress, from the time of her youth in the Caribbean to her unhappy marriage and relocation to England .

Caught in an oppressive patriarchal society in which she belongs neither to the white Europeans nor the black Jamaicans , Rhys' novel re-imagines Brontë's devilish madwoman in the attic. As with many postcolonial works, the novel deals largely with the themes of racial inequality and the harshness of displacement and assimilation. Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Wide Sargasso Sea" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License ; or on original research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice. This site is under construktion - SARGAZZO SARGAZZO This site is under construktion Wide Sargasso Sea Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 postcolonial parallel novel by Dominica-born author Jean Rhys. Since her previous work, Good Morning, Midnight, was published in 1939, Rhys had lived in obscurity. Wide Sargasso Sea put Rhys into the limelight once more, and became her most successful novel. The novel acts as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's famous 1847 novel Jane Eyre.

It is the story of the first Mrs. Rochester, Antoinette (Bertha) Mason, a white Creole heiress, from the time of her youth in the Caribbean to her unhappy marriage and relocation to England. Caught in an oppressive patriarchal society in which she belongs neither to the white Europeans nor the black Jamaicans, Rhys' novel re-imagines Brontë's devilish madwoman in the attic. As with many postcolonial works, the novel deals largely with the themes of racial inequality and the harshness of displacement and assimilation.

Adaptations 1993: Wide Sargasso Sea, film adaptation directed by John Duigan and starring Karina Lombard and Nathaniel Parker 1997: Wide Sargasso Sea, contemporary opera adaptation with music by Brian Howard, directed by Douglas Horton, produced by Chamber Made 2006: Wide Sargasso Sea, TV adaptation directed by Brendan Maher and starring Rebecca Hall and Rafe Spall References ^ Wide Sargasso Sea at The Penguin Readers' Group ^ The Empire Writes Back: Jane Eyre ^ Time magazine list of All-Time 100 Novels External links From Antoinette to Bertha: the process of 'colonising' within the marriage in Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea Wide Sargasso Sea study guide, themes, quotes, & teacher resources - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia What's the true story with the Sargasso Sea? The Sargasso Sea is often associated with the infamous "Bermuda Triangle" (of which The Master has already spoken). There's a bit more to the Sargasso Sea than there is to the Bermuda Triangle, though—not that that's saying much.

The Sargasso Sea is a 2,000,000-square-mile ellipse-shaped region of the North Atlantic Ocean extending south and east of Bermuda. It's called the Sargasso sea because comparatively large amounts of seaweed of the genus Sargassum can be seen floating on the surface. Although the ubiquitous seaweed might lead one to suppose the Sea to be an unusually fertile stretch of oceana marine jungle, as it wereits warm, still waters have actually long been considered something of a desert in biological terms, with relatively little life (except for the seaweed, of course). Like many deserts, though, it does harbor its own unique ecosystem, with organisms that are specially adapted to live among the Sargassum mats, and biologists have more recently begun to appreciate the region's potential as a haven of biodiversity. (Still no mermaids, though.) The Sea's special properties are a result of it lying in the center of a huge oval of relatively still waters bounded by ocean currents, including the Gulf Stream, which circle it clockwise, sort of like the eye of a very huge, very, very slow, permanent hurricane.

Not only did Columbus encounter the Sargasso Sea, he is credited with its discovery, being the first person to leave an account of it. Columbus, ever the optimist, took the seaweed as a sign that he was close to shore. (In fact, the Sea lies many hundreds of miles from land, except for the tiny Bermuda Islands in its northwestern quadrant.) His sailors, on the other hand, reputedly first vented the oft-expressed fear of becoming entangled in the seaweed. The Sargasso Sea went on to figure prominently in nautical lore as a place where ships would become entangled by the seaweed, and if you look for information on the Sargasso, be prepared to find a lot of silliness about the "mysterious" Bermuda Triangle. It's all a lot of hooey, though. Although there's more of it in the Sargasso Sea than in some randomly chosen patch of ocean elsewhere, the seaweed there has never been remotely thick enough to hamper a ship from sailing through. A ship could no more be "stuck" in the Sargasso Sea than it could be "stuck" in any other part of the ocean.

A fact which undoubtedly added to the popularity of the "ships tangled in seaweed" legend is that the same patterns of currents which form the Sargasso Sea also lead to it being part of the area known as the "doldrums" or the "horse latitudes." Because the winds and currents are relatively calm there, sailing ships frequently found themselves becalmed—trapped not by the humble seaweed but by a lack of wind. Modern ships, of course, are no longer at the mercy of the winds that way, and jetliners are even less so. — MEBuckner Wide Sargasso Sea - Dil Hizmetleri ve Müşteri Buluşma Noktası Dil Hizmetleri ve Müşteri Buluşma Noktası Are People Really Free? Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 postcolonial parallel novel by Dominica-born author Jean Rhys. Wide Sargasso Sea put Rhys into the limelight once more, and became her most successful novel. The novel acts as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's famous 1847 novel Jane Eyre. It is the story of the first Mrs.

Rochester, Antoinette (Bertha) Mason, a white Creole heiress, from the time of her youth in the Caribbean to her unhappy marriage and relocation to England. Caught in an oppressive patriarchal society in which she belongs neither to the white Europeans nor the black Jamaicans, Rhys' novel re-imagines Brontë's devilish madwoman in the attic. As with many postcolonial works, the novel deals largely with the themes of racial inequality and the harshness of displacement and assimilation. The opening of the novel is set a short while after the 1834 emancipation of the slaves in British-owned Jamaica. The protagonist Antoinette conveys the story of her life from childhood to her arranged marriage to an unnamed Englishman (implied as Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre). As the novel and their relationship progress, Antoinette, whom he renames Bertha, descends into madness. The novel is split into three parts. Part One takes place in Coulibri, Jamaica and is narrated by Antoinette. Describing her childhood experience, she includes several facets of her life, such as her mother's mental instability and her learning disabled brother's tragic death.

Part Two alternates between the points of view of her husband and of Antionette following their marriage and is set in Granbois, Dominica. One of the likely catalysts for Antoinette's downfall is the suspicion with which they both begin to view each other, fuelled by the machinations of a supposed relative of Antoinette's, Daniel Cosway (Boyd). Antoinette's old nurse Christophine's constant mistrust of the husband and Rochester's unwavering belief in Boyd further aggravates the situation. This increased sense of paranoia tinged with the disappointment of their failing marriage unbalances Antoinette's already precarious mental state. The shortest part, Part Three, is once again from the perspective of Antoinette, now known as Bertha, as she lives in the Rochester mansion, which she calls the "Great House". It traces her relationship with Grace, the servant who is tasked with 'guarding' her in England. Narrating in a stream of consciousness, Bertha decides to take her own life as she believes it to be her destiny.

The most striking difference between the two novels is that Wide Sargasso Sea transforms Rochester's first wife from Bertha Mason, the infamous "madwoman in the attic," to the lively yet vulnerable Antoinette Cosway. She is no longer a cliché or a "foreign," possibly "half-caste" lunatic, but a real woman with her own hopes, fears, and desires. Wide Sargasso Sea tells her side of the story as well as Rochester's, detailing how she ended up alone and raving in the attic of Thornfield Hall. It gives a voice not only to her, but to the black people in the West Indies whom Rochester regards with such loathing. Her full name is Bertha Antoinette Cosway Mason.She is in between.She struggles about who she is.She speaks English and Patois.The family is not only alienated but there is also an unstability..She loses her liberty.There is no language, name and country. The characters of Jane Eyre and Antoinette are very similar. They are both independent, vivacious, imaginative young women with troubled childhoods, educated in religious establishments and looked down on by the upper classes — and, of course, they both marry Mr Rochester.

However, Antoinette is more rebellious than Jane and less mentally stable, possibly because she has had to live through even more distressing circumstances. She displays a deep vein of morbidity verging on a death wish (making her more similar perhaps to the character of Helen from Jane Eyre) and, in contrast with Jane's overt Christianity, holds a cynical viewpoint of both God and religion in general. Wide Sargasso Sea is usually taught as a postmodern and postcolonial response to Jane Eyre.Rhys uses multiple voices (Antoinette's, her husband's and Grace Poole's) to tell the story, and deeply intertwines her novel's plot with that of Jane Eyre. In addition, Rhys makes a postcolonial argument when she ties Antoinette's husband's eventual rejection of Antoinette to her Creole heritage (a large factor in Antoinette's descent into madness). As postmodern and postcolonial literature have taken a greater place in university curricula, the novel has been taught to literature students more often in recent years. Are people really free?It is what is questioned in the whole novel.Slaves became servants.Change is very much associated with pain.

It is the mariage between unequals.There is an idealized attitude towards relationship.The woman producing offspring is also in connection with other races.A white person has sexual relationship with a black person.Marriage is a duty.His relationships violate this theory.These children will have a mixed racial identity.Antoinette does not have any emotional relationship with this man.She marries only for Money and protection.Her mother Anette is from Martinique.There is a sense of insecurity in her..She feels as inferior.She is really trying to establish her position. Antoinette inherits this conflict from her mother.She is self-divided, not harmonious.Daughters will repeat their mothers.They are distant because of this.She tries to create artifical safety. Mr.Mason sees blacks as powerless people.He is like a patriarch.‘’You are mistaken’’ means you are not intelligent.Sexual exploitation is also a symbol of political power. Tia is her friend.Two races live together.There is the friendship of Antoinette and Tia.

Both of them are suffering.Tia tries to stick to Antoinette.Antoinette sees herself in Tia’s eyes.It may be regarded as alter ego.She is the unconscious side of hers.She is more natural.Antoinette sees herself as black.She is not near her mother.There are two identities in her that she cannot reconcile.They also love and hate each other.They are two halves.The conflict between Anette and Christophine is alike.They depend on each other.Christophine has magical powers.There are pictures of happy family in Christophine’ room.She is also interested in vodoo..She is split in herself. Antoinette wants to look like ‘’The Miller’s Daughter’’.There is also a longing for the past.Antoinette is sent to a convent.Religion and marriage do not go together.They soap themselves under their chemises because the body is vile according to them.There is conflict again.They are learning embroidery.They make red and white roses.They symbolise aristocracy.She wants to be lady-like. Male officials visit the convent.The convent represents materialistic sexist teaching and limited choices.

Rochester tries to make her silent to the whole world.The mother is absent in the family.Patriarchal power.Antoinette is somewhat coloured for Rochester so she is enemy.Rochester hides his feelings.He is typical Englishman.He’s suddenly fascinated by the nature.Antoinette and the island are associated.The island is an alien country form.It is an exotic place for him.He can’t conrol it.The island and Antoinette are also frightening.She represents the unknown.The forest again a sign of civilization.’’I feel this place is my enemy.’’The nature is completely unaware of us. Rochester sees Celine Varens as a commercial object.He has given her everything according to himself.Women betray according to him.Men are the victims of these women.Blanche Ingram is described as tall like Bertha.She is like a swan.It is the idea of beauty.She is rebellious.She is not fair.She is cruel.There is the competition of Jane and Blanche for the same man. Parrot becomes a symbol of victimization.In Jane Eyre Rochester becomes cripled.The sea is the gap between England and Jamaica, male and female.It is Wide Sargasso Sea.A sea that is very much like the landscape.

We cannot put victims and victimizers in one hand.It is the most obvious paradox.England.Both Jane and Antoinette have intact family.Jane Eyre’s parents are dead.It is a marriage of love.Her parents rebel againist their parents.Bertha chooses Christophine, nuns.Jane chooses Bessie.They choose servants.They are also outsiders.Jane tries herself to get out of powerty.She would waver between obedience and self. All women share the same fate outside oppression and cruelty. Bessie is sometimes cruel to Jane like Anette to Antoinette.There is child and adult relationship between them.They are child and adult.There is a kind superiority and inferiority. Jane survives at the end.Occasionally she rebels.Helen Burns is dreaming a kind of passive rebellion.Her laziness is like Eastern people.She is suffering from the conflict in herself.Everyone have conflicts in themselves.Employer and servant, man and woman, slave driver and slave. Wide Sargasso Sea ends more pessimistically.

Views: 76 Contextualizing Racialized Interpretations of Bertha Mason's Character Contextualizing Racialized Interpretations of Bertha Mason's Character Keunjung Cho (English 151, Brown University, 2003) [ Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charlotte Brontë —> Works ] ertha Mason's ambiguous racial background has become the subject of various postcolonial debates regarding Jane Eyre, particularly after the publication of Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966. Rhys' work "retells" portions of Brontë's story through the voice of the oppressed Bertha, whose imprisonment in Thornfield's attic arguably represented the oppression of a racial inferior, a half-Jamaican Creole. Neither Brontë nor Rhys reveal Bertha's racial lineage, but the possibility of African blood within her veins has fostered a variety of criticism about the racist connotations behind her portrayal as a madwoman and even her suicidal act of "burning down the house" to make way for the white female protagonist (Ghose 4).

While such racially conscious criticism by postcolonial scholars is hardly new to today's reader of Jane Eyre, two articles from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, published one and five years after Brontë's novel, respectively, provide a social and economic context, more contemporary with the publication of Brontë's novel, as to the relationship between Britain and her West Indian colonies. Such historical and social background lays a foundation for the literary (postcolonial) analyses which have added complexity to the identity of Bertha Mason along racial lines. "Five Years in the West Indies" (Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine V71 1852), is an unimpressed review of Thomas Day's book of the same title, wherein Day essentially attempts to counter various "imaginative literatures" with a more "observational," less "idealized" travel narrative.

Day's stay in Jamaica began in 1847, the same year that Brontë's novel was published, and attempts to refute supposedly popular notions of a Caribbean paradise, describing instead a kind of Caribbean hell full of lunatic "Negros." Although Blackwood's criticizes Day's adamant intolerance toward anything non-British, the parallels between Day's ideas and those of Rochester are worth examining. Day's pseudo-scientific analysis of "Negro inferiority," like statements by the later Social Darwinists, attributes this supposed inferiority to both genetic and environmental conditions. It parallels Rochester's attitude toward Bertha. Both illustrate how "racism" entailed a mixture of British self-superiority with a fear toward the madness and violence of "Negroes," Creoles, and other racial inferiors. Blackwood's review includes several of Day's claims that "Negroes, and the coloured tribes generally, are given to immoderate bursts of laughter, without any sufficiently exciting cause . . .[and] their blood is inflamed . . .by their climate and by their" inherent nature.

Like Day, Rochester loosely associates "madness" with Bertha's racially "impure" lineage as well as the tropical West Indian climate in which she grew up. He mentions "the fiery West Indian" place of Bertha's upbringing (ch 27) and her Creole blood as the roots of her insanity. He claims that "Bertha Mason is mad [because] she came of a mad family;--idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a mad woman and a drunkard!" (ch 26). Later, Rochester specifically mentions that Bertha's family wished for him to marry Bertha because of his "racial" superiority. "Her family wished to secure me because I was of good race, and so did she" (ch 27). After offering a variety of associations between madness and "impure" racial composition, Rochester, like Day, reverts to West Indian climate as a cultivating force of such madness, a kind of hell for the "civilized" Englishman. Regarding his stay in Jamaica, Rochester states, The air was like sulphur steams . . . I could find no refreshment anywhere. Mosquitos . .

.the moon was setting in the waves, road and red, like a hot cannon-ball . . .[it was] a world quivering with the ferment of tempest. (ch 27) Thus, the arrogant attitudes of the British, as illustrated by Rochester and Day, are mingled with vulnerability and an inability to conquer the unruly madness of the choleric "Negro" as well as the climate within a land which supposedly belongs under the flag of Empire. The tension between fear and belittlement reflect the ambiguity in a racialized power dynamic between the Negro and Day's fellow Englishmen, between Rochester and his Creole "madwoman." Although Blackwood's 1852 article criticizes Day's xenophobia and intolerance, "Our West Indian Colonies," published one year after Jane Eyre (Volume 63, 1848), supports popular notions British superiority. Here, Blackwood's focus is British legislation, both the Emancipation Act of 1833 and the "liberal," "free-trade oriented" equalization of tariffs between various imports of sugar.

According to the article, these acts have supposedly undermined the increasingly popular notions of British "humanity" and anti-racism which pervaded nineteenth century "liberal" thought. Blackwood's states that the emancipation of slaves and the enforcement of free trade have oppressed and exploited the British working classes and colonial planters. First, Emancipation left the colonial planter short of labor, destroying his productivity and rendering his property essentially worthless. No one thought of the condition of the colonists" when the British government decided to "emancipate blacks within her colonies [or] when the following years of apprenticeship were curtailed in 1838 to grant "unqualified freedom . . .to the negro population. [224] The article adds that such economic suffering had extended to Englishmen in the country as well. "The capital now jeopardized in our West Indian colonies, is the property of fellow citizens in this country," he states (231). Blackwood's continues by describing the adverse effects of such a sudden embrace of emancipation and free trade, which amounts to "oppression" of planters and British working classes. The country became aware of the cruelty and injustices of that infamous traffic, and abolished it.

Years afterwards, she awoke as from a dream, and began to abuse the planters for possessing slaves; declared they had no right to hold them in bondage (although she sold those slaves to them;) had them valued by commissioners whom she appointed; paid eight shillings in the pound of this valuation, and set them free, without any consideration whatever for the landed property, buildings, and machinery, amounting to much more than the aggregate price of the slaves, which were to be rendered useless and valueless form want of laborers. [222] In addition to rendering the planter's property worthless, Emancipation has, according to the article, worsened the inherent laziness of the newly freed Negroes. "The primal curse now lights upon the emancipated negro, who has no ambition" and instead wallows in "universal idleness" (226). Thus, the article portrays the freed slave as a contributor to the oppression of the white planter, who is the victim of both the British government's hypocrisy and the "Negro's" indolence.

Such a racialized opposition and economic rivalry, between the emancipated slaves and the oppressed planters, problematizes the situation of Bertha, who is either racially mixed, or, at the very least, perceived as "racially inferior" because of her birth and upbringing in the West Indies. As the daughter of a planter she would be a victim according to Blackwood's, but as a "Creole," she is part of the planter's problem. When one reads Jane Eyre through the lenses of this article, the dichotomy between white planter and inferior race, melded within Bertha, raise issues as to her "identity" and even suggests that her madness may stem from a socially and racially constructed incoherence within her own sense of self. This "incoherence" also destabilizes her status as either victim or oppressor, complicating the question of power dynamics as raised by the 1952 review of Day's book. Each article takes a different tone toward slavery, the colonies, and race, but both illustrate prevalent relationships between planters and the colonized peoples, between Creoles and "true" Englishmen.

They demonstrate how Bertha Mason's West Indian background is subject to a multitude of interpretations in relation to racial attitudes and to economic relations between Britain and her colonies. Sources Ghose, Indira. The Power of the Female Gaze. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998) Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. (London: Wallace Literary Agency, Inc, 1966) "Our West Indian Colonies." Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine February 1848: 63. "Five Years in the West Indies." Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine June 1852: 71. Wide Sargasso Sea | Rankly Wide Sargasso Sea Ranked #44 on the list Best Postmodern literature Books 0.00 About Wide Sargasso Sea Year Released: 1966 Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 postcolonial parallel novel by Dominica-born author Jean Rhys. Since her previous work, Good Morning, Midnight, was published in 1939, Rhys had lived in obscurity. Wide Sargasso Sea put Rhys into the limelight once more, and became her most successful novel.

The novel acts as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's famous 1847 novel Jane Eyre. It is the story of Antoinette Cosway (known as Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre), a white Creole heiress, from the time of her youth in the Caribbean to her unhappy marriage with Mr Rochester and relocation to England. Caught in an oppressive patriarchal society in which she belongs neither to the white Europeans nor the black Jamaicans, Rhys's novel re-imagines Brontë's devilish madwoman in the attic. As with many postcolonial works, the novel deals largely with the themes of racial inequality and the harshness of displacement and assimilation. The opening of the novel is set a short while after the 1833 emancipation of the slaves in British-owned Jamaica. The protagonist Antoinette conveys the story of her life from childhood to her arranged marriage to an unnamed Englishman (implied as Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre). As the

Question: Which 1966 postcolonial parallel novel by Jean Rhys acts as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel Jane Eyre?
Answer: Wide Sargasso Sea